


night in rak’tika

by CosmicTurnabout



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Introspection, Male Solo, Masturbation, Multi, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-19 00:48:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22269208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CosmicTurnabout/pseuds/CosmicTurnabout
Summary: Night falls in the Rak’tika Greatwood, and Emet-Selch’s mind wanders.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 39





	night in rak’tika

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, even minor deities have to take care of business sometimes.

Night came like dying.

It was impressive how quickly darkness fell in the Rak’tika Greatwood. The moon poking out from behind distant mountains gave only a pale ghostly light, and came accompanied by a surprising chill besides. Emet-Selch had been here near on a week now, but it always seemed to catch him off guard. The Warrior of Light and their companions had chosen a bloody fine place to spend so much of their time lately. From what little he had seen so far, they were quite the precocious group, and if he could but wriggle his way even more into their good graces, change a few minds—well, there was really only one mind he was fixed on changing, truthfully—then he would have a clear path to victory. His comrades had called him back on the heels of a major disaster. Lahabrea’s machinations had amounted to little more than a mound of chocobo shite in the end, and so here he was. Everything hinged on this.

But even now, there was time to rest, and to contemplate. As he preferred it.

Tonight he was up one of Rak’tika’s great trees, lounging on a wide forking branch he had judged sturdy enough to support him, with a view over a considerable expanse of forest. Foamy treetops swept into the distance, so far it strained the eye, bobbing like clouds with the breeze coming nippy and sharp from somewhere to the south. Here and there large birds flitted about the canopy, chattering as they circled and snapped at groups of insects before plunging back down into the dense foliage. The only sounds came from those birds and other wildlife scuffling about in the undergrowth. It was not a bad view, nor a bad place to sit, exactly, just not the sort of sleeping conditions he was used to. 

Emet-Selch twitched with these thoughts, shifting against the rough bark behind him to find a more comfortable position, knowing the attempts futile even as he moved. Emperor Solus zos Galvus had become used to sleeping in a lavish bed, with buxom servingwomen plumping the pillows and turning down red silk sheets for him each night. Quite a different thing to sleep outside more often than not, on the hard ground or against a tree with nothing but his thick coat as cushioning. Decidedly inelegant and coarse. 

_I was not brought back to be emperor,_ Emet-Selch reminded himself. _I was brought back to correct mistakes. I am not playing the same role._ His stint as emperor was done, or so he hoped. He had sired heirs to continue the royal line, lived his life, died of old age—and been paraded through the streets in a beflowered casket afterward, no doubt. All that accomplished, he did not think he could still be attached to the identity of Solus zos Galvus. And yet, when he had reawakened within the Solus shell—one of the many lying in wait in a secret chamber of the Garlean royal palace—he had not bothered to modify the body as he might once have done. Ascians could shape the bodies they took to their liking, and most of those surviving had done just that. Perhaps he had grown too familiar with the body he’d inhabited for generations of mortal lives. Used to it, even after long years floating in limbo, in no body at all. It was a humbling thought.

_This is not the same role, no. But it is the same game._ And he had a mind to see it through.

Emet-Selch settled back against the trunk, finally content enough on a position, and stretched his legs out in front of him. He crossed one boot over the other, crossed his arms across his chest, tried to lean back and let sleep’s slow seduction do its work. But when he was alone, his thoughts tended to meander to his past lives, and it was only natural that he should linger on his years as a ruler of men, and on what he had seen and learned in that time.

Most of the beings on the Source and the shards eked out lives as best they could, with not a care for what had been lost so long ago. If only they could remember that life had once been so much fuller than it was now. Small godsdamned chance of that, though. In Emet-Selch’s experience as emperor, mortals rich and poor, great and humble, cared about only a handful of things: eating, sleeping, fighting, and fucking. He sneered to himself. There was immense hypocrisy caught up in that last. Even the so-called noble houses of Ishgard were obsessed with producing legitimate heirs and covering up the bastards sown by their wayward sons. For all the pretenses they put on, for all their prudishness and decorum, they were as concerned with who tumbled who as any street gossip in the Brume.

It was much the same for other noble houses and kingdoms throughout the land; Ishgard was simply the most egregious example. For himself, Emet-Selch was not nearly so prim. He had always had practical views when it came to sex. It was a necessity for mortals in the absence of creation magic, and in a mortal’s body, he could not use that magic to reproduce as the Amaurotines had done. He’d performed his duty as a mortal, crafted the scaffolding of the Garlean empire by propagating the royal line. And yes, he had also found it a diversion, something he enjoyed doing when the opportunity presented itself. He was never so desperate as to seek it out, but if he could coax it, suggest it, or let others suggest it for him... well, there were always men and women willing to provide sexual favors to the emperor in hopes of personal gain. It was just that Emet-Selch hardly ever bothered to reward those favors.

His thoughts drifted further as the moon rose up from behind those faraway crags, a stark white coin in the starless sky. He closed his eyes, sleep close but seemingly out of reach, as if behind a filmy veil he could not pierce. He cast about, and found skittish images of women and men he had bedded smearing into each other, one to the next, in the panorama of his mind. Ah, so his thoughts had brought him to this. Yes, this could help him sleep. Nude bodies bending in front of him, on top of him, underneath him, taking him in mouths and holes wet and ready for him. There had been so many it was not worth counting them all. There were certain memories worth reliving every now and then, however.

Something shifted between his legs. There was a tightening below Emet-Selch’s belt, heat and pulsing energy gathering into a coiled knot; his member began to throb with it. This body was letting him know what it needed, quite urgently at that. A familiar feeling, and something rather easily taken care of. Sighing, he yanked a glove off and reached down, down into the folds of his coat, into his breeches where he could free the aching thing. He pulled it out into the chill night air, wincing at the contrast in temperature; he had not grown as used to the cold as he had thought. Giving his cock a few test strokes, he undid his coat to bare about half of his stomach. Best not to mess his clothing if he could avoid it.

He fell into lazy routine, beginning to slowly run his fingers up and down his shaft, grunting softly as he circled the head. As different as Amaurotines and mortals were, things had not changed too terribly much in the ways of physical pleasure. Of course, Amaurotines had also linked souls during intercourse, which had made the experience trancelike at the expense of some physical sensation. _This_ , now. This was pure pleasure, fiery and visceral, and he could not say that he disliked it. Not in the slightest.

Pleasure rolled from his loins down his legs in small ripples, ever so slowly picking up pace even at his leisurely speed. The vague thoughts that had urged him to excitement came back now, and vividly. One memory in particular sprang to the forefront, as it did of a night when he had no one to warm his bed and only his hands to find release. A brazen vixen of an Elezen who had all but forced her way into his rooms, practically demanding to take his seed. She was a Garlean noblewoman who had been present at his coronation. His rise to power had sent all of the local lords and ladies baying for his attention, and in the case of the ladies, that often meant attempts to ambush him in a private place, to stroke his arm and bat eyes suggestively in hopes of a more intimate audience. This noblewoman was Elezen, and she was beautiful in that angular way Elezen women frequently were, but he could not recall her name. It did not bother him overmuch, though he was sure they had been introduced. What need had he for mortals’ names, barring those of his inner court? They were little more than ghosts, half-real things that fluttered about unaware of their incompleteness. Dust motes drifting in the light, to be swept away and forgotten as soon as used.

Still, that Elezen... he had only taken her a few times, but he could not forget what she had done. Running her long fingers down his cock with lidded eyes, her perfect hair flowing down her back in rivulets of liquid silver. Him, pressing into her mouth, feeling her tongue wrap around him, climbing his shaft with desperate little whimpers. She sucked him like a whore, slurping with relish and smiling up at him, her eyes chips of ice. That had been very nice for a while, and then he had taken control, and laid her down across the bed to thrust into her cunt, rutting against her hips until the pleasure ache crept to a knife-edge that he clung to doggedly. She had bared her chest to him, her skin lovely in the moonlight, and he had pulled out and spent himself over her, panting as his seed hit her neck, slid down between her breasts. They were so plump and pert that he could not resist tweaking a nipple afterward. He pumped his cock harder, his head and neck flush against the tree, stifling a moan at the memory. Pre-come beaded and dripped from him now, coating his fingers and allowing him to thrust more easily into his palm. 

His thoughts wavered, then coalesced into another delectable memory. Of course, men had also vied for his attentions, and while many of these tried to work their way to him via political alliance, some had also tried seduction. Emet-Selch had no particular preference for the male or female form when it came to mortals. He found that they could both perform to his satisfaction, and while he had known he would need an empress eventually—for the sake of the royal line, if nothing else—he sought his pleasure with men when the mood took him. There had been an Auri footman who had presumed to enter his bedchamber without knocking, no doubt thinking that the emperor’s prolonged glare earlier that day had been an invitation for something more, not an admonishment. Emet-Selch would have had the man flogged, if not for the intriguing look in his molten gold eyes. Gold, like that of some Ascians. He let the footman in, let him do what he would. The emperor soon learned that he was surprisingly limber for all his height, with quick hands and a hot, eager mouth; the man had teased his cock until he felt he might burst. Then he had bent over, breeches loose, sweat glistening on his forehead, to allow the emperor to plunge into him from behind; he had been exquisitely tight. The Au Ra’s rough tail wrapping around Emet-Selch’s leg, squeezing when he pulled out to come on his back, all over his red-and-gold livery. It almost amused him to think of the man trying to explain the mess away to the washerwomen. That one Emet-Selch had never learned the name of, though he had served him at table nearly every night for months. Noblemen, servants. They were the same. Most mortals he interacted with were not worth devoting to memory beyond moments like this, where images would do.

A Roegadyn woman who mounted and rode him so roughly that nearly all thought fled. A Miqo'te coach driver who had let Emet-Selch mark him as he wished, with nails and teeth and even snaps of Fire aether. Two Hyuran women who shared him between them, one running her lips and tongue along the contours of his body while the other gave him her cunt. He never cared if he pleased his intermittent lovers; all that mattered was what they could offer him. If their moaning and pleading and cries of pleasure amounted only to mummery in the end, well, he enjoyed a mummer’s show as much as any other.

Emet-Selch was close. His shaft was warm and slick in his palm, and he had brought his other hand around to cup his balls as the knot in his loins tensed and quivered; he had not bothered to remove the glove. He had more memories to resort to than he had initially thought, and the buildup had been well worth it. A few strokes more and he came, hard and strong over his stomach in short, thick ropes that looped wetly onto his cold skin. The back of his head hit the trunk behind him as he exhaled with the burst of pleasure, his hand falling away and coming to rest on the branch beside his discarded glove. 

He felt almost as if the air had been kicked from his stomach; somehow, he always seemed to underestimate how this activity drained a mortal body. For a few moments he sat there, taking long, deep breaths, collecting himself. The ripples of pleasure slowly began to ebb away, and he felt some energy returning to his limbs, if sluggishly. When his head was finally clear, he lifted his gloveless hand. Wind aether swept the mess off his stomach, and a small thread of Fire dried all else that remained. He did it coolly and precisely, as he did everything. Buttoning up his coat and breeches, he slipped his glove back on and shifted into as comfortable a position as the branch and tree would allow. The images his mind had conjured came with no emotional weight, and could be harried off until next he required them, as with mortals themselves. Needs slaked, he could rest. 

The Greatwood was as dark and eerie as ever it had been, its wildlife finally quiet both above and below the trees. Emet-Selch’s mind was blank for the moment, empty even of his schemes for the near future. It did not bother him; he was well and truly tired now, ready to fall into the void, his hands clasped across his chest. Unlike his fellows, he knew exactly when to tread slowly, to relax, to contemplate. He could afford some time to relish what was good and pleasurable about mortality, scant as it was. 

_ No, no. It is not a matter of affording. It is a matter of  _ deserving _. _

He closed his eyes with the ghost of a smile on his lips. He did so enjoy sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Why yes my M.O. *is* to use introspection as an excuse to be horny, how did you guess?


End file.
